


Wish

by Zharena



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-02
Updated: 2018-03-02
Packaged: 2019-03-26 12:41:18
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 535
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13857987
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Zharena/pseuds/Zharena
Summary: "Tell me, what is the sky like?"Written for sillyotter on tumblr for Voltron Positivity Day 2018!





	Wish

“Tell me, what is the sky like?”

Shay looks at him, her eyes wide with awe as he bends over, poking at the aircraft’s insides. Even in the darkness of the caves, they glow a hot yellow, burning as brightly as the sun. Her lips are drawn in a small smile, and she rests her chin in one of her hands. Curious, dreaming. Radiant.

The question takes him by surprise. He nearly drops the tool in his hands as he looks at her, thoughts sprinting in a thousand different directions. How could this girl with the eyes of a star have never seen one? Realization settles on his chest, heavy and dense as a lump bubbles in his throat. Somehow, he finds a way to swallow it down.

He’s always been told not to take things for granted, but if his short time as a paladin has taught him anything, it’s that that list never stops growing. Well-worn experiences so mundane to him—the satisfying squeak of a bolt being tightened into place, the soft fabric of a shirt being pulled over his chest, and the sky, infinite and fluctuating beneath the galaxy’s whims—suddenly don’t seem so mundane anymore.

He adds it to his catalog of dreams. When he goes to bed later that night, he’ll go over each item, one-by-one, muse over them. Swallow newborn nostalgia’s caustic salve and fall asleep, the list never once leaving his thoughts. It’s a weight he’s learned to bear, one that connects him back to the people he’s saving even when it’s been weeks since the last distress signal.

Hunk should be used to this now. Still, the words leave his mouth in a harsh blurt, almost an accusation, but not quite; a phrase infused with skepticism, but without malice. She’s never seen the sun. He doubts her, if for a moment, and it drips from his tone. He can’t help it: he’s so shocked by the fact that she’s never seen the sky, never felt the warm sun shine on her skin or seen the stars. He’s taken it for granted, taken her experiences for granted. He wonders just how many more times this will happen before it’s all over.

Guilt crackles in his chest and shoot up to his brain, setting on fire every crevice his anxiety has burrowed into. He messed up, he shouldn’t have said that. It cycles through his brain one, two, ten times. Two seconds, at the most. He should, has to say something, he tells himself. 

Shay reacts before he can apologize. Doesn’t flinch. If something’s amiss, she doesn’t show it. Just carries on the way she probably always has. She scales her way up the ship on thick, calloused hands, beaming as she tells him about how close to the surface she climbs, how near she gets. There’s a trail to her voice, though; a mask of resilience resting atop the longing that she can’t quite quell.

She tilts her gaze skyward. More than skyward, even; perhaps toward a place neither here nor there, a world existing only in the hollows between the cave’s stalactites. Illusory, fleeting, nearly touchable.

One day, he decides, it won’t be a fantasy anymore.


End file.
